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Summary

Description

David Cousin, 1863. 3-storey, 5-bay (grouped 1-3-1), palazzo-style bank forming part of terrace, with round-arched, keystoned openings at ground floor, full-length balcony at 1st floor, rectangular openings to upper floors and consoled entablature. Smooth-painted ashlar at ground floor; yellow sandstone ashlar above; squared, coursed yellow sandstone to rear. Ground-floor cornice; band courses above 1st and 2nd floors; modillioned eaves cornice; deep recessed blocking course.

FURTHER DESCRIPTION: Ground floor with Corinthian pilasters to central 3-window arcade; outer timber-panelled doors (2-leaf to left, single-leaf to right) with fanlights flanked by plain pilasters supporting consoles (see NOTES). Pierced, scrolled detailing to 1st-floor consoled balcony; architraved 1st-floor windows with consoled cornices overlaying partial entablatures. 2nd floor with deeply recessed windows flanked by inset plain quarter-pilasters.

Fixed plate glass at ground floor; 4-pane glazing in timber sash-and-case windows above. Grey slate roof; coped yellow sandstone ashlar gablehead stacks with circular buff clay cans.

INTERIOR: Ground-floor banking hall with 2 fluted cast-iron columns supporting joists; decorative plasterwork to compartmented ceiling including dentilled and egg-and-dart cornice; some consoled corbels. Some timber-panelled shutters at 1st floor.

Statement of Special Interest

A good example of a mid-19th-century provincial bank, with particularly fine Italian Renaissance-style detailing, situated on High Street at the heart of Hawick. The ground-floor banking hall, accessed through the door on the left of the main facade, retains many original features. The upper floors, reached via the door on the right of the main facade, would have contained offices and accommodation for the manager; they now form two flats, one at each level.

Now the Bank of Scotland, the building was originally the British Linen Bank. The British Linen Company had been the first financial house to establish a branch in Hawick, in 1783. The company was acquired by the Bank of Scotland in 1969.

The consoles supported by the pilasters flanking the doorways bear foliate relief carving and the British Linen Company monogram, 'BLC'.

David Cousin (1809-78), who practised in Edinburgh, was one of the most accomplished architects of his generation. He was appointed architect to the British Linen Company after the death of his predecessor, George Angus, in 1845. The design of provincial bank buildings was thereafter the mainstay of his practice. Cousin worked principally in an Italian Renaissance idiom until the late 1860s when he began to adopt a mid-Victorian freestyle. List description revised following resurvey (2008).

References

Bibliography

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